Reinhard von Kirchbach

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Reinhard von Kirchbach (born May 13, 1913 in Lichterfelde ; † March 20, 1998 in Altenhof ) was a German Evangelical - Lutheran pastor and provost , who was involved in interreligious dialogue after his retirement . He emerged as a mystically oriented writer whose longing was directed towards the unity of all religions willed by the one God in Christ .

Live and act

Origin, form, studies of theology

Reinhard von Kirchbach was born in Berlin in 1913 and grew up in Dresden . He lost his mother when he was six. His father Arndt von Kirchbach was an officer , served in the General Staff in World War I and began to study theology in 1920 at the age of 35 . When he remarried in 1921, Esther von Kirchbach became Reinhard's second mother. In addition to his sister, he got a stepsister and then another five half-siblings. Esther von Kirchbach became known through church publications in the prewar period and today through a stamp in the series Women of German History . The son was able to pour out his heart to her, and she gave him access to Christian mysticism and to a lived dialogue with Catholic Christians.

Reinhard von Kirchbach was shaped in his childhood by the diverse relationships with aristocratic families who served the common good in Saxony in various functions . Instead of his earlier wish to become a forester , like his father, he decided to study theology , which he completed after semesters in Marburg and Tübingen in Leipzig in 1939 with the First Theological Examination. During the Nazi era, his father was a leader in the Confessing Church as a cathedral preacher at the Sophienkirche in Dresden and, since 1936, as superintendent of Freiberg in Saxony. As a result, he was imprisoned only for a short time, but had to endure a long period of impeachment. When the war broke out , he was able to become a Wehrmacht priest at his own request, while Reinhard, as a twenty-six-year-old candidate for theology, volunteered for military service in the air force .

Second World War

Reinhard von Kirchbach regarded his war mission, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the front flight clasp in gold, as his military duty. When his eyes opened at the end of the war, he suffered from the question of how he allowed himself to be blinded and how he could look away from the atrocities that he occasionally witnessed. His occasional refusal to carry out inhuman orders, his little help for starving Russians or friendliness towards oppressed Jews later filled him not with pride but with shame in view of his half-heartedness. He never spoke of this phase of his life, and most of the people around him knew nothing about it. He had radically freed himself from military ideals and also from aristocratic traditions, insofar as they could have captured him in professional circles.

Husband, pastor, provost

During the war he had Margarethe born. Married Countess Zech-Burkersroda , a granddaughter of the former Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg . The marriage, which ended with her sudden death in 1975, has six children. Reinhard von Kirchbach became an Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Schleswig-Holstein and worked from 1948 to 1976 in Lübeck , Schinkel , Gettorf and, as provost, in Schleswig . He spent his retirement in Altenhof near Eckernförde. In 1981 he married Benita geb. von Scharnweber, who died in 2008, ten years after his death.

Inner calling

Without taking plenty of time for his studies, his prayers and his writing, Reinhard von Kirchbach could not and did not want to carry out his duties as a pastor, preacher and teacher of the faith in growing circles. Two spiritual career experiences, first in his youth and then later in a prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt , did not allow him to limit himself to the administration of a church office in conventional channels. He saw himself called by God to the peoples of the earth. Two years before his death, he wrote about it:

"Because God called me and I answered him, I live by his mercy, his patience in the flow of his work and by the power of his truth."

And further:

"As I fell towards an abyss of annihilation without stopping, the voice of Jesus reached me in the unstoppable fall, and just as inexorably I rose, carried, towards the light of glory from which I was called."

From the quiet seclusion of his study he rushed forward in search of God's reality in this world in order to answer the call. A great inner unrest and an even greater expectation drove him on.

Learning path towards interreligious dialogue

His theological thinking became a way of constant learning in conversation with earthly realities and with God. He worked through the works of great theologians such as Augustine , Luther , Kierkegaard , Barth and Käsemann - and prayed. When he was made aware of the Jesuit theologian and palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin in 1957, a new hunger for knowledge of God in previously unknown dimensions arose . Now he acquired and read each of his posthumously published books as soon as they appeared; for here he found a theological-spiritual approach to the theory of the evolution of life and to the dialogue between the cultures of all of modern mankind. So he obtained more modern science literature on the formation of the cosmos , the geological ages, and the evolution of life including man - and prayed. He did this by listening to the voice of Jesus and God for all information. He continued to learn by conquering mountains of religious studies literature and studying dialogue experiences like that of Raimon Panikkar . He followed the first major dialogue conferences of the religions in which churches and Christians participated and viewed essays and reports on the fundamentals, methods and objectives of dialogue - and prayed. And he finally put all of this to the test and continued to learn by making individual friends from Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam and living with them for 19 years, often for three to six weeks each year.

Pray, understand, write

Reinhard von Kirchbach's theology can be described as a “theology in prayer”. He left it in writing. Because what he reflected on in prayer in the early hours of the morning for decades and what occurred to him - also later before, during and after the dialogue meetings - he then put down on paper in bound - one might say “ poetic ” - language. He has put many such texts together in small collections or larger brochures and given them away in his neighborhood. These writings were and will be published in a work edition by the Traugott Bautz publishing house, after the book I believe in interreligious dialogue there in 2008 . Access to the life and work of the trailblazer Reinhard von Kirchbach has appeared. Two volumes with lectures and sermons have also appeared or are in preparation. Some examples of his work can be found on the website set up for his concern.

The project of interreligious dialogue

His idea of ​​a project of lived interreligious dialogue, which had developed more and more clearly in him during the last years of service, could no longer be realized alongside his ecclesiastical office. It was not until he took early retirement in 1976 at the age of 63 that he was able to begin the “self-experiment” that would fulfill his life until his death 22 years later. He learned English in addition to his school French, wrote the policy paper “A Project” in German and English, searched for and found dialogue partners while traveling in Europe and South Asia, and in 1980 invited to a first six-week dialogue meeting at his house in Altenhof near Eckernförde. In the following years he arranged to meet a very constant group of Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims as well as occasional Jews for 14 such meetings in Europe and six Asian countries: to live together and meditate, to participate in the life of other religions, to talk and learning, partying, working and relaxing. He as well as the dialogue partners exposed themselves to painful and encouraging processes. This is evidenced by the unpublished minutes of the meetings, the lectures that von Kirchbach gave across the country in ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical groups, the "spiritual reflections of our encounters", as he once called his poetic writings on the dialogue meetings, and also brochures and reports of his Dialogue partner in German or English.

Special features of the "Living Interreligious Dialogue"

Reinhard von Kirchbach saw his “Living Interreligious Dialogue” as an addition to the dialogue efforts undertaken worldwide. It is characterized by the interaction of the following characteristics:

  • An understanding of dialogue that goes far beyond the verbal exchange of ideas
Reinhard von Kirchbach tries to live together. The common housekeeping and the television of the evening news are just as much a part of it as the mutual invitation to the religious celebrations or the request to help with the field work.
  • Careful observation of the dialogue principles
No mixing of the traditions; no denial of one's own belief; no relativization of the positions; no leveling of the differences. But instead: stay connected and not allow yourself to be separated; enrich one another; to unfold itself progressively.
  • The relentless exposure of the temptations to which people, or at least Christians and the churches, are exposed in dialogue
While Reinhard von Kirchbach forbids himself to judge or even criticize the others, he takes himself all the more sharply into judgment. Through his behavior, the others are also encouraged to act within their means. He can expect them to think that, like him, they are "called out of the little grave of our lives and the great grave in which our nations are buried with the confessions of their faith."
  • Independence in terms of order and financing
Reinhard von Kirchbach carried out his project with approval, but without any interference from church bodies. He finances it largely from his own resources. The partners are free or pay as they can. Grants and donations are tied to the purpose, but not to conditions.
  • Most of the interviewees had a continuity for almost 20 years
As a result, in addition to their traditions and current views, they also bring a large part of their personal résumé into the encounters, with all the changes and strokes of fate.
  • A spirituality of dialogue
It can be summarized in the creed: God conducts the dialogue, and we who take part in the dialogue live the belief that people of different faiths belong together. We live it in such a way that the emphasis of our coexistence lies on the transcendent driving force of faith itself and not on the religious or ideological differences of faith nor on the respective theologies, systems, convictions, strategies or previous experiences.
  • A broad horizon for dialogue
The overall horizon cannot be overlooked by anyone, as it is given by the belief horizons of all those involved. In addition, it extends far into the future of God with His humanity. Reinhard von Kirchbach expects his own religion and the other religions from their sources to be reborn over long periods of time.

The theme of local and global Christian missions is always included in these reflections. He senses the distant future so closely that he doesn't impatiently try to force anything he urgently expects. The dialogue does not aim at the hoped-for changes, but rather it is the result of changes beginning to take place.

End and beginning

Since 1995 Reinhard von Kirchbach had personally considered his path of dialogue to be over. He used the strength of the last three years of his life to carry his cause further into his church, as if he were just getting started. He died in Altenhof in March 1998 at the age of almost 85. He is buried in the cemetery in nearby Gettorf. He was able to present his last book “In the stream of divine activity” to those who visited him on his deathbed. The last text in it is headed: "Only now have you come to the beginning."

Pioneer of conversation among religions

Reinhard von Kirchbach has become one of the pioneers in the dialogue between religions for the Evangelical Church in Germany . In doing so, he took his own, relatively lonely path, on which he opened doors inwards and outwards. From his faith and the encounters he found deep access to the sources of faith of others. It could happen that individual people from Hinduism , Buddhism and Islam felt more intimately connected with him than with believers from their own religion. On the one hand, von Kirchbach was an “outlier” among the Lutheran theologians of his church, but on the other hand he always remained in conversation with his bishops and colleagues in northern Elbe . Some of them pursued and accompanied eagerly to learn his way. Others suspected his undertakings and statements. Thus the acceptance of his concerns in his church remained limited during his lifetime. Reinhard von Kirchbach was not born to be involved in interreligious dialogue, but from the end of his life his path led to it surprisingly consistently.

Self-image

“That is a thought that has occupied me since my student days: the question of God's self-revelation . I cannot imagine that God is not there with the mercy of his power at all times and in every place as someone who is looking for this person or this group in very special, special ways. I also got food for thought from my study of the writings of Teilhard de Chardin , who - based on the natural sciences that depict the world as an unfolding world - re-understood Christ as the one who leads the world in its unfolding. The constant new listening, new understanding of old words and formulas is a process that can already be demonstrated in the New Testament , and in which the living hearing community experiences Christ as the present and continuing Lord. From this perspective, e.g. For example, such a word from Christ: 'When I will be exalted from the earth, I will draw them all to me' (John 12:32), heard anew and revealed anew by him - also with regard to other groups of faith. An observation that we can all make has been added to this approach ... namely, the observation that the geographic, economic and political pressure on the earth is getting stronger simply because there are more and more people, and we always are get more to do with each other. In this context we are also talking about the unitary civilization on earth. This pressure is of course also effective in the spiritual, ideological and religious areas. The response is u. a. to notice a kind of disintegration of the religious group that cannot withstand such pressure. This results in new hybrid forms without a more precise profile. "

Assessments

Characterizations of Reinhard von Kirchbach through his religious interlocutors, reproduced in the anthology I believe in interreligious dialogue , 2008:

  • The Imam Mehdi Razvi: "For me Reinhard was a living saint , a holy person, a Christian saint, very conscious of his sinfulness." (P. 107)
  • The Hindu Govindh Bharatan: "In our tradition we have a word for mystical people ... We call them Rishis ... Before I met Reinhard, I had only read about such people in books, but my encounter with him proved that such people exist." (P. 127)
  • The Buddhist Deepal Sooriyaarachchi: “A questioning mind - the quality mark of a Buddhist - was Reinhard. Devotion, selfless joy, loving kindness and serenity are the four sublime attitudes towards life according to Buddhist teaching. In Reinhard I met a man who possessed these qualities in abundance, and in that sense he was a Buddhist - or maybe I can even call him a Bodhisattva , i. H. someone who is on the path of enlightenment ”(p. 193)
  • The Sufi - Sheikh Mahmood Rashid: "That was Reinhard, a mystic and great Sufi of our time." (P. 213)
  • The Christian Joachim Wietzke: “As far as we know, Reinhard von Kirchbach never called himself a mystic, and according to people who have accompanied him for a long time, he has rejected this characterization. ... For me, R. von Kirchbach is a deeply pious man and biblically founded theologian who was way ahead of his time. Our church needs such 'heretics', 'border crossers of the faith' and 'missionaries' who show us the way out of the solidly built doctrinal structure of our institutional religion. "(P. 302, 308)

Publications

  • A project on interreligious dialogue (1978); now in: Hans-Christoph Goßmann / Michael Möbius (eds.): I believe in interreligious dialogue. Access to the life and work of the pioneer Reinhard von Kirchbach , Verlag Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, pp. 9–25 (online at reinhardvonkirchbach.de) (PDF; 85 kB)
  • In the stream of divine work. Meditative prayers , Friedrich Wittig Verlag, Kiel 1999, ISBN 3-8048-4455-3
  • A theology in prayer - writings by Reinhard von Kirchbach , ed. by Hans-Christoph Goßmann and Michael Möbius, Verlag Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2009 ff.
  • Words for every day . Published by Hans-Christoph Goßmann, T. Bautz Verlag, Nordhausen 2014, ISBN 978-3-88309-912-5

literature

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the concept of Christ Evolutor in Teilhard de Chardin
  2. ↑ There are serious reservations about both characterizations of "mystically oriented" and "expecting the unity of all religions in Christ". They can be found with the authors Neubert-Stegemann (p. 180 f.) And Wietzke (p. 302 f.) In the anthology I believe in interreligious dialogue , 2008. His student and interpreter Michael Möbius writes on the unified theme: “RvK ersehnte not the unity of religions. He looked for a close togetherness of the religions, which continued to differ, in the common one and only God. He expected the religions to enrich one another and develop from their own sources. "
  3. ↑ http://www.reinhardvonkirchbach.de/fileadmin/pdf/III/2/2_Deutsche_Presseagentur.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.reinhardvonkirchbach.de  
  4. ↑ On the coexistence of those who differ , in: Dialog aus Glaubens , p. 257 f.
  5. ↑ See: Michael Sturm-Berger : Interreligious Dialogue - A Brief History of the same with special consideration of the events in Germany and Berlin (online at akr-berlin.de) . The world prayer meetings are also important for interreligious dialogue .
  6. ↑ The mission theologian Theo Sundermeier coined the term convivence for this interreligious coexistence . He characterized this in three ways: as mutual help, as mutual learning and as common celebration. See: Theo Sundermeier: Convivence as a basic structure of ecumenical existence today , in Ecumenical existence today , Volume 1, Munich 1986.
  7. ↑ On the coexistence of the different , in: Dialogue from faith , pp. 231, 234 and 241.
  8. ↑ Get up, morning is approaching , in: Come, I want to talk to you , p. 79 f.
  9. ↑ Reflections of Faith , in: Come, I want to talk to you , p. 133.
  10. ↑ Christianity in search of its place , in: Dialogue from Faith , pp. 198–200.
  11. ↑ See, however, the conference on his 100th birthday in the Christian Jensen College in Breklum: Archived copy ( memento of the original from December 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.christianjensenkolleg.de
  12. ^ Provost von Kirchbach in conversation with Ute Herrmann in: Dominformationen. Edition June / July / August 1976 (online at reinhardvonkirchbach.de)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 830 kB). This mystical approach can only be understood through: Harald and Kristian Schjelderup: About three main types of religious experience forms and their psychological basis , Berlin / Leipzig: de Gruyter & Co. 1932; Erik H. Erikson : The religious longings of people , 1958 (online at pkgodzik.de) (PDF; 54 kB) and Joachim Scharfenberg : Religious consciousness as narcissism? 1974 (online at pkgodzik.de) (PDF; 70 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.reinhardvonkirchbach.de  
personal data
SURNAME Kirchbach, Reinhard von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Evangelical Lutheran pastor and provost
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Lichterfelde
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1998
Place of death Altenhof